The list of known high-voltage voltage transducers includes inductive transformers, capacitive dividers or capacitive voltage transformers, and transducers using bulk-optic electric field sensors. The first two transducers suffer from bandwidth restrictions, expensive failure, extensive maintenance, heavy weight, and output variations. They also suffer from the need for substantial insulation that is both expensive and potentially hazardous to the environment (e.g. oil and/or SF.sub.6 gas).
U.S. Pat. No. 4,939,447 issued Jul. 3, 1990 to Bohnert et al (see also the paper "Fiber-optic sensing of voltage by line integration of the electric field" Optics Letters, vol.4, no.5, Mar. 1, 1989, pp. 290-292) describe a voltage sensor that uses multiple fiber-optic piezoelectric electric field sensors to measure voltage. Accuracy is obtained by the use of a plurality of sensors i.e. the Optics Letters publication indicates that to obtain reasonable accuracy 22 sensors connected in series was required.
Pockels cells are known devices that have been used for measuring voltage particularly high voltage, for example see U.S. Pat. No. 5477134 issued to H. Hamada and U.S. Pat. No. 5731579 issued to G. K. Woods. A preferred form of Pockels cell for use in the present invention is an integrated optics Pockels cell such as that described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,029,273 issued Jul. 2, 1991 to Jaeger the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.